Democracy Diary: The Dems hold the Senate!
If we had fair election laws back, it would never have been close.
In this election, I focused on doing all I could by doorknocking and making phone calls. My friend Joyce door knocked for the first time, together with me up in Cedar Rapids. This is one way democracy looks — friends working together for the values we believe in: freedom to be recognized as women with full human rights, freedom to love, freedom to take care of each other.
Then I stayed with the uncertainty (I’ll come back to that, and the link with desire for autocracy, in another letter.)
Simon Rosenberg’s early voting results gave me some hope, as I wrote here, and so I haven’t been following the results closely. I figured they’d be what they were, and we’d move on from there. So I found out that we held the Senate from calls and texts from subscribers Rhawn and Jean, which I didn’t even see for several hours.
I texted Rhawn back that what I wished we could mark the moment with something like the iconic 1951 World Series victory with the announcer screaming “The Giants Win the Pennant!” except it would be “The Dems hold the Senate!” He promptly sent back an audio recording, which I cherish and have played for a number of people.
All the election deniers running for Secretary of State lost. That’s a very good thing for 2024. And so far, there’s been no violence and no unhinged rants (at least outside wackadoodle, reality-free corners of the internet) about any of these elections being stolen. Losers conceded or at least didn’t make absurd claims.
Young people turned out. Women turned out.
Democracy won the day.
These are all good things. Some people say “I can’t believe we have to celebrate such simple democratic processes in the United States.” I don’t know why that would be hard to believe. We’re not exceptional. Democracy can be lost. (We know this b/c it was, in the South after Reconstruction, for eighty years). We know this because white women didn’t get the vote until 1920; for most black women, it was the 1960s before they won the right. We’ve undermined democracy in other countries, and we are now subject to interference in our elections, largely by Russia.
There’s still some work to do, but let’s talk about that next time. For now, let’s bask.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve been sleeping easier this week.
Warmly,
Jonna